The Nikon D7100 is here and appears to be based around the new sensor and image processor of the D5200 which is proving rather good at video so far.

Whilst the D7100 gains a dedicated movie mode and headphone jack, it has a few things that may disturb video shooters.

A higher priced body than the D5200, the biggest change is the body form factor itself – which of course adopts Nikon’s semi-pro control layout. It is far more like the D800 than D5200 in terms of handling. I rather like the simplicity of the D5200 and I found the D800 a little tricky.

The other big change is that the camera dispenses with the anti-aliasing filter altogether like the D800E. There’s no version of the camera *with* an anti-aliasing filter. This could be one of the more disturbing aspects for video shooters, however moire & aliasing on DSLRs is largely to do with how the sensor is sampled. On the D800E moire and aliasing wasn’t really any different in video mode to the D800 with an anti-aliasing filter.

Unfortunately there’s still no 1080/60p and one of the D5200’s strongest features for video – the articulated screen – has been banished as is sadly all too common on high end DSLRs! I much prefer the 60D’s approach as a semi-pro DSLR which doesn’t consider this as an amateur feature. The 5D Mark III is a pain in the neck without one and the omission can’t just be related to weather sealing as the GH3 succeeds in giving us both.

The official press release makes a lot of the D7100’s new 1.3x crop mode for both video and stills – which makes the DX sensor more like a Micro Four Thirds 2x crop over full frame. The D5200 also has this in movie mode when set to 1080/60i instead of 30p or 24p but the quality suffers with it in enabled.

A quick look at the side panel reveals a mic socket and headphone jack like the D800.

The HDMI is uncompressed – like the D5200 if not identical. However it is 60i or 30p in live view and drops to 720p when recording is activated in-camera. I’ve not been able to figure out a way to get 24p or 25p from the D5200 at full 1080p resolution yet and I expect the same goes for the D7100. Nikon’s official info says: “When recording a movie through an HDMI interface, the output image may be smaller than the value set with the “image size/frame rate” menu”.

I’m expecting it to be pretty much identical to the D5200 in terms of video and stills quality. Unless there’s an added feature which isn’t on the early specs sheet I’ve seen, the D5200 looks like the bigger bargain.